This bird business is getting out of hand. If you’d told me five years ago that I’d become a birdwatcher in the not-too-distant future, I’d have har-de-har-harred and advised you to seek professional help.

Be that as it may, I found myself prowling around in a cemetery the other day in search of an Eastern Screech Owl I’d heard rumour of. The problem with the location for the search was that, in addition to my little bird problem, I also have a real thing for cemeteries. It sounded like the perfect combo to me. Now who needs professional help, hmm? Hey, we all have our demons…

Well, the owl was nowhere to be found, although, I have to confess, my search was perhaps slightly less diligent than it might have been in a less fascinating environment.

Here’s what I did see (please excuse any photographic weirdness you might encounter – I just got PhotoShop Elements 11 and we’re becoming acquainted):

And, as if that weren’t thrilling enough (okay, thrilling to me, anyway), I found someone who is…er…that is to say was more enamoured with their trailer than Bob is with ours!

Hey, do you think they’d do an Airstream tombstone for him when he kicks the bucket?

This is gonna be a post without an actual point. Just some bits and pieces of cool things we saw on our adventure.

I hope you don’t think me weird…nah, that’s a lie – go right ahead and think it if you like…but I really love love love old cemeteries. The one in New Bern, North Carolina is one of my favourites. It has graves and tombs dating back to the 1700’s. Some are very elaborate, and some are flat out bizarre. The ambiance of the place is amazing: trees draped with Spanish Moss, pathways paved with crushed oyster shells, giant tombstones, and so on.

I love the little bits of ornamentation that look sorta like faces.

What the heck does that mean: “Her lamp was burning?” You couldn’t give us a clue at least? Like, “Her lamp was burning, but her candle wasn’t?” Or, “Her lamp was burning so fiercely that it burned her house down and that was the end of her?” Was she a pyro? C’mon, I have questions, dammit! Don’t leave me hangin’ here!

And here’re some pictures of our awesome campsite on the Outer Banks that I forgot to show you earlier (or possibly I was at a loss for a decent segue, which is more likely the case):

Here are some of Bob’s famous (amazing) sunset photogs. We had to look at this mess every evening (sad, eh?):